Influences of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Microsystem on Mothers' Experiences

The goal of this project was to explore mothers’ experiences of caring for infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) using a microsystem perspective. This perspective focuses on the structure, processes and people and in so doing allows for a critical exploration of how these elements work together to influence mothers in the NICU. The research framework involved an institutional ethnography to explore care delivery, relationships, and discourses in the NICU. Data was collected using nonparticipant-observations, interviews, and collection of discourse artifacts. There is clear evidence that caring for an infant in the NICU can result in significant increases in maternal stress and associated outcomes. Results from triangulation of the data indicated that being separated from the infant and learning to mother in the unit were particularly salient experiences retold by the mothers. These experiences were affected – either positively or negatively – by different elements of the microsystem including consistency in communications, increased opportunities for mothers’ inclusion in decision-making and infant care and lastly, access to more support resources. Implementing improvements to the microsystem could better empower mothers adjusting to parenthood within the NICU context